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Sunday, November 24, 2013

The Thing (2011)

In 1982 Sci-Fi/Horror maestro John Carpenter made his remake of The Thing from Another World (1951) called The Thing (1982). In my opinion, an that of many others, he made one of the best sci-fi/horror films in history. Now, in the 2000's we have a habit of remaking everything that stood out above the rest. Luckily the producers of this film decided that Carpenter's film was already perfect and so they decided to make a prequel, also called The Thing (2011). Paleontologist Kate Lloyd is invited by Dr. Sandor Halvorson to join his
team who have found something extraordinary. Deep below the Arctic ice,
they have found an alien spacecraft that has been there for perhaps
100,000 years. Not far from where the craft landed, they find the
remains of the occupant. It's cut out of the ice and taken back to their
camp but as the ice melts, the creature reanimates and not only begins
to attack them but manages to infect them, with team members devolving
into the alien creature.

The Thing (2011) turned out to be a hugely disappointing film that doesn't come near the quality of John Carpenter's The Thing. The great atmosphere that made The Thing (1982) such a good film is largely gone. Even the feeling of complete isolation from the rest of the world doesn't come over. The ''infamous'' scene where the crew develop a little experiment to test who is an alien and who is not is recreated in this film. This time they check if they have fillings in their teeth to see if he's an alien or not. A pretty stupid replacement if you ask me. And again the tension is nowhere to be found. The special-effects featured in this film are not worth looking at. There is an excessive use of, crappy, CGI and it quickly makes you want to re-watch Carpenter's The Thing with its amazing old school effects.

The cast is pretty decent, although you can hardly replace a guy like Kurt Russell. It is also nice to see what happened at the Norwegian camp. The findings that Russell and his crew did in The Thing (1982) (two-headed alien, bloody axe, burned bodies etc) al return in this film and we get to see how it happened which is a cool element for the ones who saw Carpenter's film as well.

Overall The Thing is a pretty big disappointment. It doesn't come near the quality of Carpenter's film and misses a big piece of its moody atmosphere, pure tension and feeling of isolation. As a stand-alone film it's ''watchable''